Tag: Missouri

Details lacking in TV coverage of bridge opening

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A bridge! A bridge! Abridged? The recent opening of a new bridge over the Mississippi River at St. Louis got grand coverage from the city’s television news stations. Footage of the sparkling span dominated morning reports by Fox News Channel 2, KMOV Channel 4 and KSDK Channel 5 on the Friday before the official opening on Feb. 9. Cheerleading, in fact, was in top form as anchors and reporters gave testimony to an engineering achievement accomplished with admirable efficiency. It was a good story about civic progress. But the journalists’ day job – reporting – was noticeably, ah, abridged.

Reporters get ethics, law wrong in vacated murder sentence

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When Ryan Ferguson was released from prison Nov. 12 where he had been serving time for the murder of a newspaper sports editor, television journalists from across the country swooped down on Columbia, Mo., home of the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism. The big story provided a teaching moment for one professor, concerned about accuracy, media ethics and the appearance of objectivity. A lesson was to be learned, too, about convergence, and how an event can be transformed or amplified by the various forms of media buzzing around it.

Beacon-KWMU merger: Journalism re-imagined

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BY JAN SCHAFFER / When the St. Louis Beacon and St. Louis Public Radio cinched their deal to merge their two newsrooms in December, they stepped right into the front lines of how old and new media are re-imagining journalism. The combined news organization (http://news.stlpublicradio.org), which will have a hefty three dozen-plus editorial employees, promises not only to alter the nature of journalism in St. Louis, but it also will chart new pathways for media entrepreneurs around the country exploring ways to make their startups sustainable.